U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, took to the floor of the house Friday to congratulate President Obama on helping found a “new Ottoman Empire” with his foreign policy:

Thank you President Barack Hussein Obama. This will be quite a legacy for you. And I’m not one of those who says he’s not a Christian. All I know is that’s between him and God. But what I do know is he has helped jumpstart a new Ottoman Empire and left our friend and ally Israel so vulnerable in this sea of radicalism that he has helped bring to the surface. … You look across Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, Iraq and Iran, and Syria and Lebanon, You look at these countries and come on over to Afghanistan that this president is losing as we speak and Pakistan which has been harming us all they could while still taking our money … This is a massive beginning of a new Ottoman Empire that President Obama can take great credit for.

Gohmert has a history of making controversial statements when addressing his fellow congressmen, as evidenced by this quip from Buzzfeed‘s Dorsey Shaw: “In today’s episode of Louie Gohmert Opens His Mouth On The House Floor…”

So what are some of his other wild declarations? In August, the Texas Tribune‘s Jay Root recapped a number of Gohmert’s controversial statements over the years, concluding that controversy plays well in his East Texas district:

Over the years, Gohmert has compared homosexuality to bestiality, endorsed a column likening Barack Obama’s presidency to Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship and warned anyone who will listen that evil-doers are making “terror babies” who — like human time bombs — will be trained abroad only to return some day to wreak havoc in America.

He has been called both a “deather” and a “birther” — the former a reference to his view that, under Democrat-inspired health care policies, frail senior citizens would be sentenced to death; the latter stemming from his role as a co-sponsor of a bill that critics of Obama used to question his U.S. citizenship.

More recently Gohmert was “publicly rebuked” in June after signing his name to a letter that “questioned whether Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was part of an evil conspiracy by Muslim extremists,” Root wrote. Democrats said the letter, which tied Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood, “smacked of modern-day McCarthyism.”

Gohmert has been a conservative firebrand for years. David Guinn, Gohmert’s constitutional law professor at Baylor Law School, told Root that, even then “[h]e was about 32 degrees to the right of Attila the Hun.”

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